This is http://www.essayz.com/a9007031.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %EXTERNAL EVENTS PERSONAL EXPERIENCE SEE MEANING 900703 External events affect each of us according to the meaning to us which we each perceive in our external events. The meaning which we perceive in our external events depends greatly upon our own history of external events, and upon what we have perceived as the meaning to us of those external events as we have seen them. No two of us have had the same history of external events and of seeing meaning in what we have perceived as our external events. Thus no two of us have had external events affect us in quite the same way; because, external events affect each of us according to the meaning to us which we have perceived in our own external events. In the light of the above it is foolish to act as if external events should affect each of us in the same way; e.g., according to some set of conventions and rules of propriety. That which makes me feel good and comfortable may well make you feel embarrassed and uncomfortable, and so be aversive to you. The reverse is also likely to be true. To pretend it is otherwise, is to be dishonest. Objective objects pertain to how external events affect objective measuring instruments; not to how external events affect us as authentic persons. We as persons may make observations of how external events affect objective measuring instruments, but objective scientists are careful not to let how observations affect them as persons become a primary concern in their scientific work. The focus of objective research is upon how external events affect impersonal detection and measuring instruments, not upon how external events affect persons with their particular past histories of perception and personal assignment of meanings as regards their external events. Personal relationships revolve around how we are each affected by our perceptions of each other's behaviors, including each other's most subtle of behaviors. Our perceptions of each other's behaviors depends greatly upon our histories of perceiving each other's behaviors (as well as our own) and what we have perceived as the meaning to us of those behaviors as we have experienced them. In personal relationships the focus of attention is rarely upon the effect of any object, person, relationship or other reality upon any impersonal detection or measuring instrument; and is usually upon how our perceptions of each other affect us with our particular past histories of perceptions and assignments of meanings as regards the personal events of our lives. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================